Word: shi'a
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SAMARRA, IRAQ Bombs shatter two minarets of Shi'ite shrine...
Sectarian outrages like the June 13 attack on the holy Shi'ite shrine in Samarra - the same site that insurgents blew up in February 2006 - have plunged Iraq into civil war. But it is brainy operatives like Abdallah who pose the most consistently lethal threat to U.S. forces. When we met for our second encounter in 15 months, he didn't seem especially worried that a massive U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown had been under way in Baghdad for the past four months - and that one of its aims was to break the back of the IED industry and roll...
...evidence of any such link, first raised as a possibility in local Trinidad newspapers, is wafer thin. One of the suspects, Abdul Kadir, was on his way to Iran to attend an Islamic conference when he was arrested in Trinidad. A former Guyanese legislator, Kadir is a Shi'a Muslim, and two of his children are studying in Iran. Another suspect arrested is a Shi'a imam in Trinidad, who reportedly has ties to Shi'a groups in Iraq and Iran. At least one unnamed FBI official has dismissed any possible such ties, telling the blog Talking Points Memo that...
...Iran's role in Iraq is a different story. Some Iraqi and American officials are certain that Iran knows something about the kidnapping of the five British contractors on May 31. The sophistication of the attack - the kidnappers arrived at the Shi'a-run Ministry of Finance in 40 police vehicles - suggests the Iranians may even have been in on the planning. Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, the group that most likely executed the kidnapping, answers to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The theory is that the kidnapping was in retaliation for the British killing of a Sadr...
...restraint that violent Shi'ite factions showed early in the new U.S. military plan seems to be disappearing. As a result, the deterrence card has now been played, and the gamble appears to be lost, just as the last of the U.S. troops sent for the surge get into place. As of last month, 13,000 additional U.S. troops were deployed in Baghdad as part of the surge, which ultimately will bring the number of U.S. forces in Baghdad to some 30,000. Bergner says the last of the U.S. surge forces will be in place in about two weeks...